Our latest Stronger Starts event saw residents from Curo’s affordable development at Imperial Park in south Bristol come together to celebrate their new neighbourhood.
More than 30 residents joined us for coffee and cake and to share positive stories about their new places. It’s great to see this community doing so well and to hear from people enjoying, what for many, is their first permanent home.
One resident told us, “We simply love our home. In weeks of moving, I’ve already made forever friends with my neighbours. All our children get on, and my children can't believe they have a brand-new home.
“Curo has rescued me from a grotty private flat with expensive bills I couldn’t afford, to a lovely family house. Thank you, Curo!”
Our teams keep in close contact with tenants and shared owners like these during their first year. We’re there for them on moving-in day to help everything go smoothly, and throughout their settling in to answer questions, respond to problems and pick up any repairs that need looking at.
For this latest event, we invited along Christy from Bristol's Centre of Sustainable Energy. He was there to help residents make the most of their homes’ energy-efficiency technology, including heat pumps and solar panels, which many said are already leading to significantly smaller bills.
We call this transitional project Stronger Starts, because new Curo customers really benefit from this support, and we know that events like this help people to build relationships with their neighbours and feel part of the community.
Curo recently completed 120 affordable homes on brownfield sites in Bristol, with a further 108 currently under construction. This neighbourhood of 70 flats and houses occupies the last plot of land to be developed at the former Imperial Tobacco Factory site in Bishopsworth. It’s made up of homes offered for affordable rent, social rent and shared ownership purchase. The new tenants were chosen via the council’s letting service, HomeChoice Bristol.